Pop critic Ann Powers shares a handful the albums on NPR Music's list of the best of the year, including the one album that nearly the entire team agreed on. What were your favorite albums this year?

In a year that had no rap songs in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 for the first time since 1990, rap thrived in so many other ways. This list of the 25 best rap albums of 2025 includes grand ...

At the start of February we launched our new Albums of the Month series, where we highlight the best albums released in the previous month, starting with January’s albums and followed by February’s ...

Another year is coming to an end, bring a close to the first half of the 2020s decade that, for some reason, has felt like it’s been on turbo (perhaps because of the worldwide pandemic that kicked it ...

(KTLA) — It’s officially end-of-year list season as 2025 comes to a close. While this year has seen plenty of misses or underwhelming releases, it also provided some great material from stars, both ...

I joined Paste in 2023 and, in my tenure as editor, this year’s AOTY list is my favorite by far. The publication has been doling out these rankings since 2002, affixing an “Album of the Year” ribbon ...

Have you noticed that guitars are back? I’m being a little facetious, but rock and even punk has has been steadily climbing its way back to the mainstream and we felt that more this year than we have ...

I don’t envy anybody who decided to put out an album within the 12 months succeeding Brat Summer, Manning Fireworks Fall, and “Not Like Us” — especially considering that 2025, broadly speaking, did ...

2025 was an unusual year for pop music in general. The charts reflected existing listening habits, meaning that songs over a year old still hung around in the Top 10 (we're looking at you, Teddy Swims ...